Friday, 31. July 2026 |
EHC Red Bull München: Christian Winkler im Interview zu unserem Kader
The key details for the new season are set: The roster is complete for now, the DEL schedule and preseason dates are set, and the phase of ticket sales is already underway—so the summer break is slowly but surely entering the home stretch.
“Great anticipation for what’s to come”
For Christian Winkler, it was an intense but also very successful summer. “We look back on the summer with great satisfaction. We’ve acquired exactly the types of players we wanted. The roster decisions are a great fit for the team, so there’s a lot of anticipation for what’s to come,” says the 55-year-old.
At the same time, Winkler explains what lessons we’ve learned from last season and our semifinal loss to the Adler Mannheim—and how these have influenced our roster planning for the upcoming season: “With our new signings, we’ve become more effective both on offense and on defense. That’s exactly where we focused our efforts, because our lack of scoring punch and our power play in the playoffs, in particular, didn’t make things any easier for us. With Dominik Kahun, Elis Hede, Lucas Thaler, Trevor Carrick, and Lukas Klok, we’ve further strengthened these areas to become more versatile and multifaceted overall. And by the way, with Mathias Niederberger, we have another new addition who was able to fully recover from his injury for the first time over the summer. I’m convinced that we’ll see a stronger Mathias Niederberger than ever before.”
Winkler also highlights the close collaboration with Neville Rautert (Managing Director of Sports) and head coach Oliver David. “I really appreciate Neville’s approach to work because he’s incredibly hardworking, and it’s important that he sometimes sees things differently than I do. But the coach is also crucial in this trio, because ultimately, he’s the one who has to develop the team—and for that, he needs the types of players who fit his vision of hockey.”
“Oliver has continued to develop”
Winkler also underscores just how important the coach is within this overall structure by looking at his development. “Oliver has continued to develop over the past season. He’s a very modern coach, an absolute perfectionist and communicator who devotes himself to hockey day and night and leaves nothing to chance. Now he just needs to cap off this development.”
In a few weeks, the entire team will return to Munich. Then the joint preparations for the new DEL season will begin.
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